SnagFilm is pretty awesome. Here is my playlist of documentary films to watch. free online.
Watch more free documentaries
unfinished mural in SF
advertising in the Castro
sign outdated or cool?
please feel free to interpret!
I'm setting up an instructional research area in the library and need to get some furniture for it. Went downtown to Furniture Works and found these. Ugly handsome? For sure comfortable, with plenty of room to put a pile of books on the arm rest, and the section of the back pulls down and turns into a foot rest!
Harvested my first honey a few weeks ago. Extracted honey from the comb by pushing it through a sieve. It wasn't the easiest way to do it. Here's a really great idea on how to separate the honey from the wax.
This is from Hands Across the Sand, an action that took place around the globe and in Olympia on Saturday, in support of protecting our environment.
They arrive
They came in these boxes. Dave drove them up from California. 350 orders of bees. Each order is a box of 3 lbs or about 1200 bees, including one queen. That's about 420,000 bees that Dave escorted north. One box is enough to start a hive. But starting two hives is better, in case one hive becomes weak. The time to start new hives is in spring.
The queen comes in a queen cage. To get her out, we replace the cork with queen candy. By the time the bees eat through the candy, they are used to the queen's pheromones and won't kill her.
The queen rules the house...sort of
One time in her life, the queen mates with about 10 drones. She arrives sperm filled from that adventure. That is the only time that she mates and the sperm lasts 2-3 years. When the sperm is gone, the worker bees kill her. Meanwhile, after arriving in a box with stranger bees, as the only egg layer she will soon become surrounded by her own offspiring since the worker bees die off every few weeks.
The queen lays her eggs in the center of each cell. You can see the tiny eggs in the image below. She fertilizes some eggs with the sperm and they turn into female worker bees. Some eggs, she leaves unfertilized or haploid. They become the male drones.
The drones' only task is to mate with a queen bee. After mating, the drone's endophalus falls off and he dies.
The queen is reared by nurture not nature. She is born out of a regular larva and becomes a queen because of special treatment. When the bees want to leave the hive, they make a peanut shaped queen cell around one of the larvae.
Nurse bees feed special royal jelly to that lucky maggot and she grows into a royalty (royal jelly is not as tasty as you would expect, it tastes kind of like yogurt). That privileged rearing makes the queen grow longer than other bees. My queen was inked with blue paint for easy spotting.
If the bees start making a queen cell when their colony is still new, the cell must be removed - cut off with a knife. If you leave the cell on the comb, the hive will swarm. The old queen will leave with her bees. This is how I got to taste royal jelly. Cut off the cell and pop in your mouth. That's how the beekeepers do it.
They must have enough food
Soon after the queen lays the eggs, they hatch and turn into larvae. The bees must get enough food to feed their brood and themselves to get enough energy for work. They store pollen and honey in the combs. Usually the brood is in the center of the comb and the outer edges are filled with honey and pollen.
Since the bees in the top bar hives must build their own combs, they need extra energy. If it rains and stays cold for too long after they arrive, they may starve. You will notice that their honey supply in the combs is very low or gone. You can feed them sugar syrup 1:1 ratio of sugar to water or 2:1 if they really start to starve and you find dead larvae in front of the hive. When the bees are desperate, they may eat their own larvae (like Saturn). This happened to my bees. In the picture below, the dead larvae that I found seem to have their heads chewed off.
To make it easy for them to get to some food in the rain, you can mount a jar of syrup on the front of the hive, like this:
This is an emergency, so you can also give them some honey inside the hive and for some protein, you can feed them pollen. 
Spinkle it on the landing strip in front of the entrance. They will roll it into the hive or rub in it to collect it onto their bodies, mix with nectar and place into pollen sacs on their legs for transport.
Bees can be pirates
Putting the syrup jar in front of the hive, may encourage robbing behavior and the stronger hive will steal all of the honey from the weaker hive. This happened to my hives too. I noticed clusters of bees fighting in front of a hive entrance and then saw a steady stream of bees flying back and forth from the weaker hive to the stronger one.
To fix this, we switched the hives by putting the weaker hive where the stronger hive stood and vise versa. Then the thieves "returned" with food to the weaker hive which now stood in place of their old hive. They didn't notice, because they know their home by location. Since they were carrying food, the weaker hive took them in and the bees didn't fight. We also took one honey filled and one brood filled comb from the strong hive and placed it in the weak hive. Two empty combs from the weak hive went into the strong hive. This equalized the hives and stopped the robbing.
I removed the syrup jar from the front of the hive and put it inside the weak hive instead. To help the bees defend the strong hive that was now in the robbed hive location, the entrance was covered with a piece of wood, leaving only an inch or so of the opening. I then had to check both hives to make sure that the queens were still in their homes and have not been killed by the pirates. The bees were very aggravated when I opened the hive and I should have been paying attention.
You have to pay attention
I have been trying not to wear protection. I find looking at the bees, without protection, meditative because I really have to be relaxed and stay tuned to their mood. If they get aggravated, I freeze for a while. The only times that I got stung was when I accidentally grabbed a bee with my hand or kneeled on one. This time, the bees were aggravated after the stress of being robbed. They were in a defensive mode. I was tired from work and was too impatient to be careful. I held up a comb to peer at the queen and ignored the warning buzzing. Protecting her queen and honey, a guard bee went right for my eye. It hurt.
a smoker helps to calm them and
sometimes a veil is a good idea.
Fresh oysters from the Oly farmer's market. Pink grapefruit and a free-range egg, over easy, from the Oly co-op. B&B coffee.
Shucking is a little hazardous to your fingers but it's pretty easy to do. The secret is - don't use force and understand the anatomy of an oyster. Put the hinge end in your palm, then gently but persistently work the shucking knife between the shells into the side (towards the front) of the oyster. Once the knife is in, don't pry. Move it up and down scraping the top shell to cut the muscle that holds the shells together. Once you cut that, the oyster opens up on it's own.
Red grapefruit. My friend Iole showed me how to peel it in such a way that all of the bitter peel comes off. Take a sharp knife, put the fruit on a cutting board and just cut the skin off of the whole thing. You'll get the hang of how deep to cut after you do it a few times. Then cut out the wedges.
I am on my knees on the edge of the ocean with my arm deep in the sand, barely hanging on to the tip of a clam shell. Frothy waves splash over my back and I yelp but hang on and slowly wiggle the mollusk out.
Washignton beach in winter. My jeans are soaked and my wool sweater sleeves are covered with a coat of sand. Jeff M. is barefoot with rolled up jeans and Jerm is in soaked tennis shoes and a hoodie. We are laughing, digging in the sand and pulling out the huge bivalves, surprised at each successfull operation.
There is an old woman, calmly poised by the water's edge, thrusting her custom made steel clam gun into the sand and pulling out mollusk after mollusk without hesitation. A curly haired boy watches her and eagerly holds a netted bag, collecting the catch.
The three of us are flailing near by. We are new to this hunt. We have a hard time seeing the tiny holes made by the siphons attached to the clam bodies. We stalk any little irregularities in the sand and pull out rocks. But we keep trying and our eventual success is a reward for persistence.
The WDFW opens Washington beaches to Razor clamming about 15-30 days a year. Last weekend, the beach was open on Sunday. Clamming started about two hours before the 6:16pm low tide.
The Tools:
Clam gun digger - I was going to make a clam gun because they look so easy to make, but when I found out that you can buy one at Olympia Supply for $16, I just bought one. If you want to make one, this site explains how to do it out of PVC. Pretty simple.
Shovel - it appears that in the clam digging culture, this is the macho way to dig for clams. Most people use clam guns with amazing dexterity but the burly dudes in clamming gear tend to have the shovel.
I got both for comparison and I pretty much agree with the burly dudes that the shovel method is superior. There is something satisfying about getting on your knees and digging into the sand with bare hands for your catch.
Cleaning:
Cleaning is truly the worst part of clamming. Even though I can suck down live oysters, gutting live clams is tough. You have to take off the shell, cut open the clam, take out the guts and then separate the digger from the siphon. Here is one video that shows how to do it. My goal is always to do the deed as fast as possible. Their muscles continue to spasm even after they've been gutted. I try to detach my mind as much as I can. "No brains, no pain" I say to myself.
Eating
Well, the cleaning is worth it when you are finally eating.
Razor Clam Ceviche
this is best when clams are super fresh
1. Finely chop siphons of 4 razor clams.
2. Juice 3 limes and pour over chopped clams. Let sit for at least 20 minutes.
3. Finely chop up all things that would taste good in ceviche, such as tomato, pepper, some onion, avocado, cilantro or parsley, radish, etc.
4. drain the clams leaving a little lime juice and add to the chopped veggies.
4. mix it all up and add salt, pepper and hot sauce if you like.
5. eat with tortilla chips and a cold beer or chilled Proseco.
Razor Clam Bok Choy
this is a simple recipe that really lets you taste the sweetness of the clams.
1. wash and chop a couple of bok choy heads.
2. fry bok choy in a pan with a little bit of water and then add some oil, lime juice, soy sauce and crushed garlic.
4. slice 4 razor clam diggers into strips and add them to the pan when the bok choy is close to done. cook another 2 minutes. do not overcook the clams.
5. make sure to have some bread to soak up the salty juices from the pan.
Fried Razor Clams
take out three bowls
1. mix 1C flour and some salt and pepper in one bowl.
2. beat an egg in another.
3. put a cup of Panko bread crumbs in the third.
4. heat some vegetable oil in a skillet.
5. dry 4 calm diggers on paper towels.
6. dip in flour then egg then bread crumbs.
7. put in the pan and fry 1.5 minute on each side, no more or they will be tough.
8. put on a paper towel on a plate.
9. eat with some cold beer.
Feasting on ceviche, fried clams and nettles.
The Greens: Leek Gorgonzola Nettles
I picked some nettles last weekend. It's too early in the year but they are out because it has been so warm. They were just a few leaf levels tall. So tender. I wear gloves and use scissors to clip off the plant just below the third bract, where the leaves grow out from the stem. This person does it with bare hands, which I totally respect, but why bother when you can wear gloves?
1.Fry some leek ringlets.
2.Boil nettles for 25 minutes and drain (save the liquid for an after dinner nettle tea). For the amounts, try to balance out the leek and the nettles so you have about the same of each. Mix nettles with leeks in the frying pan.
3.Mix in some blue cheese and cook for about 5 minutes longer.
The Protein: Tony's famous BBQ Tofu
1.Freeze a packet of firm tofu.
2.Thaw it and squeeze out the water with your hands. Who knew this makes tofu so delicious?!
3.Put some oil on an oven-safe glass dish.
3.Slice up tofu into 1/2" thick slices and arrange on the dish.
4.Mix 2/3 cup peanut butter with 1/4 cup orange juice, 2Tbs. oil, some soy sauce, pepper, garlic, paprica
5.Smother the tofu with the mixture.
6.Let the tofu sit for at least 30 minutes. I left mine, covered, in the fridge for 24 hours because of lazinesss.
7.Bake on 350F for 35 minutes.
8.Take out, smother with BBQ sauce and bake for another 20 minutes.
It looked pretty on the plate - green nettle leek mound with chocolaty brown crispy tofu. I meant to take a picture but it looked so good that I forgot and ate everything.
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I am a fan of secret cafes. I don't know too much about their history except that I went to my first one in Olympia at the Track House, sometime in the earlyish 1990s. In my mind it is a concept that Molly B brought over from the east coast - Maryland. So, as I remember, some punks started having regular vegan cafes at the grungy communal home on the rail road tracks in downtown Oly. I believe that Molly B was in charge. It was amazing.
Every Sunday or some other day of the week (every day was Sunday), we'd show up to the Track House and claim our spots at the card tables in the yard. The tables were all unstable because they were usually balancing on some wood laid over the swampy lawn. My favorite spot was under the lavender Wisteria canopy.
The food was wholesome. I remember one dish was called "Fuck the Man_icotti". It was vegan manicotti with some sort of tofu for cheese substitute. There would be salad and some flower-infused drink and a vegan sugarless dessert. Kind of bland but delicious nonetheless because it was so awesome to sit in this yard with other people and eat. Sometimes a band would play. Once Rebecca Pearcy's song made me cry all over my dinner because I had a broken heart. It was about a blue heron flying over.
The food was cheap -- $5 for a three course meal. I think that a lot of it came from gleaning and dumpster diving. We were all poor. There was a cleaning station set up in the yard with different buckets for washing your dishes when you were done. The dishes were all chipped and mismatched from Goodwill. I loved those dinners.
Then there was the Red Horse at Mirah and Ariana's apartment. I will write about this later because it was amazing too.
These pictures are from a Secret Cafe last weekend in Oakland put on by a former Oly girl and friend of Molly B. This one was finger food, drinks and music. It was so crowded, I had to use elbows and my Russian Jewish chutzpah to get me out of there.
NYT places and ad for a Wine Club next to people suffering the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. I know that this is probably computer generated, but seems like they should have thought of this. American decadence and global inequalities seem especially highlighted through this, let's say accidental, juxtaposition of the images in leading US news.
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